


out of the ash I rise with my red hair

by hypotheticalfanfic



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Lydia Martin, Gen, Lydia-centric, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-25 13:50:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6197476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypotheticalfanfic/pseuds/hypotheticalfanfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia Martin is not afraid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	out of the ash I rise with my red hair

“Immune” is the word Peter uses when he shows up at Lydia’s house a few weeks later, smirking like the prince of the underworld. “Some are,” he says, sibilant and sickly. “It’s a…mutation seems an ugly word. Let’s say, ‘adaptation,’ instead.”

She stands tall (as tall as four-inch heels and flawless posture can make her), and in her mind she is a being made only of red lips and white teeth, something dangerous and new. She is not afraid. “Adaptable, that’s me.” The kitchen is normally bright, all white and chrome and spotless marble countertops, but the lights are off and the new moon isn’t helping anyone who doesn’t have magically-enhanced night vision right now. The room is all shadow and shade, and if she was a wolf she’d be able to see him more clearly. If she was prey, knowing how well he could see her would render her still and scared and small, like it did before. But she is not a wolf, and she is not prey, and she is not afraid.

“Hard to breathe in here,” and he didn’t smell it when he came in, isn’t _that_ interesting?

“Coming back from the dead dull your senses?” Sharp eyes, quirked head, like she’s just dissed his outfit instead of figured out something he didn’t want her to know. Not that she’d diss his outfit: the leather jacket-blue-button-down-battered-jeans combo works fine on his lean frame. Shoes are a misstep, but then he grew up when old man shoes were, you know, for young men. Which he was then. _Okay, redirect those thoughts_ , _that way lies…more madness. Madder-ness._ Really, he looks the same as he did the first time she saw him, when he tore into her with teeth too sharp and too long and too wrong, wrong in a human mouth. He hadn’t transformed fully, not then, just grown the teeth and ripped her skin and she’d screamed and blanked out, but she remembered those eyes and teeth like she didn’t remember anything else in her life, ever.

He shrugs, starting to wheeze a bit. “Everything smells like death when you’re dead.” Reaches out one hand, nails grown sharp and long, she’s pretty sure by accident, but it doesn’t matter. She is not afraid. Anywhere he could put a hand or lean or touch has a vase, a jar, a thick bunch of wolfsbane on it, purple and powerful, and he cannot steady himself except on the doorframe, he cannot move into the room, into her space, and he cannot touch her, he will never touch her, never again.

She takes one step forward. It’s small, but it is undeniable, and he flinches like she shot him with a glowing silver arrow, like she’s Allison or something, and it feels good and right and so she takes one more small step forward to see him flinch again. “You’re not dead, though.” She lets a slow, sweet smile spread across her face, lets just a hint of teeth gleam, and if she had the fangs he’d be the one who screamed this time.

“Close…” a gasp, “close enough.” He steps backward, one large stride away from her. “Anyway. Thought I’d stop by,” wheeze, “see how you were. Tell you about the - thing. Choke on some fumes. The usual.” Wheeze, wheeze, gasp, cough, and then he is gone, just a wisp of air in the shadows. She is alone, and she is not afraid.

~~~

“A, made more restrictive, B, made uniform worldwide, C, made to impose harsher penalties, D, dutifully enforced, E, more fully recognized as legitimate.”

Stiles throws a pencil toward the ceiling, bounces it, grumbles.

“Hey, twitchy, pick a letter.” Lydia’s hands ache, hours of transcribing, and quizzing Stiles for the LSATs had been so far down the list of things she wanted to do today that when he gave her the big eyes, _oh lydia you’re so smart please help me_ she had very nearly puked on him. Or stabbed him. Something. Instead here she sat, watching him not listen so she had to read the damn thing three times to her - and when she pointed out that he really should read the thing, he claimed dyslexia, which he doesn’t even have. She knows that, and he knows she knows, and therefore the real reason is that Stiles is antsy about something else and having her here distracts him. He’s a bundle of twitches on the best of days, and the best of days haven’t shown their faces in this town in years.

“What’s the question again?” He makes a decent effort at a sincere expression.

“Why are you even taking the LSAT? You have, like, zip interest in the law other than breaking it.”

Another pencil bounced off the ceiling. “Damn.”

“Stiles is taking the LSAT for what reason: A, his best friend and boyfriend—“

“Not my boyfriend,” Stiles interjects calmly, the way he always does.

“—are werewolves so he’s hoping to avoid dealing with that? B, his dad is a cop and to rebel he’s going to turn public defender? C, he likes my company and won’t admit it but I’m way too smart and about thirty lightyears out of his league so he pretends an interest in something I’m good at?” A pause.

“I mean, you’re not wrong, but it’s actually secret option D, a big-ass werewolf war is going to leave a body trail behind it and someone needs to keep Scott out of jail. Derek’d be fine, but Scott’s a tiny infant child and he’ll never get a good lawyer.” Another bounced pencil. “Anyway. The other thing, the real question, it’s A, right?”

Lydia smiles the mid-range nuclear weapon-level smile. “Good boy. Want a treat?” Dog puns always strike Stiles as insults, and he bristles and stalks away in a really good Derek impression, and Lydia is left with a pencil-free ceiling. She flips one halfheartedly, nails it, it’s buried nearly to the eraser in what is likely pure asbestos. It doesn’t matter. None of this does. She isn’t afraid but she is drowning, is how it feels these days. Drowning and flailing and crying for help but no one hears her, and there seems to be nowhere to run to anymore.

~~~

It turns out that having a werewolf boyfriend isn’t nearly as great as those teen romance novels make it sound. It’s basically the same as it always was, with the added element of “sometimes my boyfriend goes nuts and tries to eat me,” but that’s really not that unusual in the dating world. Maybe now it’s more literal than it was before, but the danger has always been there, especially with Jackson. It’s funny (funny weird not funny ha-ha) because Jackson doesn’t look any different, not when he’s calm, which, okay, isn’t really all that often these days. Once upon a time, Lydia’s pretty sure, he was a relatively laid-back, kind of spoiled jock. He’d been sweet and kind of dumb and insanely hot, and besides that she’d liked him, liked that easy strength, liked the way he looked at her like she was special. Now he’s wound so tight she’s never sure he won’t wolf out on her, turn into something hulking and heartless. More heartless.

“So you’re not a wolf.” His voice is dull, the way he used to sound whenever they were around other people. These days he sounds like that around her _and_ around other people. It makes her want to scratch out his eyes with her long crimson nails.

“No, obviously. What, are you dumber now?” She’d roll her eyes but it’s hardly subtle, and she has taken pains to learn much more effective and devastating ways to make Jackson feel stupid. Which he is, a lot of the time, and besides it’s a skill that’s applicable in so many contexts that not learning to do so seems ridiculous. Like believing in werewolves. Like getting your hands dirty in the backyard planting row after row of tall purple flowers, while your mother watches with worry in her eyes. Like brushing up on archaic Latin in search of what else the things that go bump in the night want, what else hurts them, what else she might be if she’s survived the bite and kanima venom and who knows what else. “The bite makes you big and strong and fast and also really stupid? Great trade-off, I guess.” She regrets that last, wishes she could bite it back. Instead it floats in the air like smoke, waiting.

Jackson’s eyes flash blue, ungodly blue, blue like neon lights and fear, and if she were prey…but she’s not. She can feel the cold blade at her back, the knife she laced with wolfsbane herself. She can feel the brass knuckles with spikes, and they may be the handle of a black leather clutch but they’ll more than do in a pinch. She can feel her own adrenaline, thrumming and pumping underneath her heartbeat, sharpening her senses, and if this is what a werewolf feels like even a little bit she can understand it a little more now. She has spent all summer reading old books about forging silver (with some help from Daddy Argent for the equipment) and fighting shadows every night, using the muscles and reflexes she honed in cheerleading to do things she knows her body shouldn’t be able to do. She’s a small girl, always has been, and yoga and Pilates are no preparation for war, but she’s getting better every night. She couldn’t win, maybe, but she could hold her own if she had to, if it came to that. She’d be breathing, still, she’d keep existing until one of the other wolves heard, or until an Argent showed up. It’s not that she necessarily _wants_ to stab Jackson with a poison-laced dagger but given the choice between being ripped apart by her boyfriend and ripping him apart herself, she’s never not going to go with option B. She is not afraid anymore.

“Don’t.” Steady voice, calm, because the alternative is to become prey, and Lydia is many things but not prey, never prey, never again. She rose from the blood-soaked field, she rose from the stifling bed, she rose a beauty or beast or both from the dead, and Lydia knows that she will rise above this, too, if she needs to.

“Don’t what,” he snarls, but she sees his throat pulse once, twice, swallowing. She sees his eyes fade out, neon blue into the gray-green-blue mishmash she used to love. He shrugs those shoulders she once adored, stalks away like nothing happened. She takes a breath, takes another, breathes in the sharp air and breathes out the fear. She is not afraid.

~~~

Ms. Morrell sits back, sighs heavily. “You can’t break the bond,” she says. “Break the bond keeping him alive, you’re liable to break your own mind. Go insane, or worse.” No mention of the inherent insanity already present in this conversation, although Ms. Morrell’s eyes dance for half a second as if implying that she’s purposely ignoring that part because really, who has the time?

“So what do I do?” Once, Lydia had lied to her, played dumb and pretty like she’d been taught her whole life because that’s what you do to authority figures when your name is Lydia Hazel Martin. But now, with the powerful pulse of immunity — adaptation, mutation, magic, whatever it was — coursing through her veins and old legends crowding in around her ears and the soft, steady rhythm of Peter Hale’s heart beating against her own, Lydia looks to Ms. Morrell for truth, for guidance, for another bunch of herbs to experiment on later.

“I don’t know, Lydia. The adaptation is genetic, but it’s rare. Very rare.”

“What, like a ‘one girl in all the world’ kind of thing?” Reflex, deflection.

“More like the Argents, you could say. A family trait, but not necessarily a defining one.” Ms. Morrell steels her expression, emits clear-eyed and open-faced body language in the way she does when she’s very carefully not lying. “It’s probably your mother’s side, because Martin doesn’t show up in the literature anywhere of note. The name is depressingly commonplace anyway. What’s your mother’s maiden name?”

“Weaver,” Lydia says without thinking. It’s become habit to answer Ms. Morrell truthfully, to not hesitate, and the way it feels to say this — to say the thing her mother ordered her, over and over, never to tell anyone — well, it feels like eating wolfsbane, like breathing sulfur, like rising from the dead. The name claws its way out of her throat, into the dead air of the office, and Lydia wants to tear her mouth to shreds for its betrayal. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone that.”

“Yes, probably not.” Ms. Morrell looks…Lydia can’t come up with a word. That’s rare, and frightening. “Tabitha’s an odd enough name, but add Weaver to it…” Ms. Morrell looks upward as if for strength. “A Weaver, after all this time. That adds a wrinkle we hadn’t foreseen.”

A swirl of fear rises in her heart, and Lydia feels like prey again, just for a second, for the first time in a long time. Ms. Morrell is a predator in a way that silver and wolfsbane and mountain ash and memorized Latin can’t stop, can’t protect Lydia or her family from. A predator with the best of intentions, perhaps, but with blood on her teeth nonetheless. The kind of predator Lydia can feel building within herself, the kind with scars upon scars and long red nails. She sees in Ms. Morrell the person she will become someday, can see herself a little older leaning over a desk handing papers to a scared young thing with bite marks not yet healed. That’s not the future she wants (two or three doctorates, Fields Medal, later the Abel Prize, a tenured position at one of her three preferred Ivies, and a house with books on every surface), but it is the future she can feel coming.

Lydia leaves the room in no apparent hurry, carefully not clutching an old manuscript Ms. Morrell had found as if it was a lifejacket full of diamonds. It’s in ancient Greek but that hasn’t challenged Lydia since sixth grade Girl Scout camp, so it’s not like it’ll be a problem figuring out the words. The problem will be not burning it like her cells are screaming at her to do, not dropping it in the garbage disposal in a shower of shredded paper, not burying it beneath her purple garden where the worms and god knows what else can eat it away into nothingness. That’ll be the hard part.

But she’s strong enough, and she is not anyone’s prey or sacrifice or bait, not anymore, and the next goddamn wolf who comes for her will get more than the passive wall of wolfsbane blooms. There will be sharp and dangerous things, hot and burning things, and Lydia Martin will rise laughing out of the ashes of anyone who tries to touch her, ever again, and she’ll do it in four-inch heels and bright red lipstick. She is not afraid, and she is not weak.

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE: This is set at the end of S2, ish. I stopped watching around then, and I choose to believe this version of events.
> 
> LSAT prep from [LSAC.org (PDF)](http://www.lsac.org/docs/default-source/jd-docs/sampleptjune.pdf).
> 
> Title from "Lady Lazarus," Sylvia Plath:
>
>> Herr God, Herr Lucifer  
> Beware  
> Beware.
>> 
>> Out of the ash  
> I rise with my red hair  
> And I eat men like air.


End file.
